NEW YORK – Tracy Turnblad, the unlikely leading lady of "Hairspray," which is the next must-have ticket on Broadway, wants something more than a prince. She's an American teenage version of Cinderella, ca. 1960, so it's fame she's after, not to mention fortune enough to pay for fluffy-skirted dancing dresses with beehive-teased hairdos to match. The fame in question is a place among the high school kings and queens chosen to dance on afternoon television's "The Corny Collins Show," modeled after Dick Clark's "American Bandstand."

But Tracy doesn't look the part of a TV icon. She is a rotund, short person, even though in the person of Marissa Jaret Winokur she can sing and dance with the best of them. Winokur's a name to remember because her performance is likely to be the lodestar for the Tony Award next spring. From the top, she establishes her center-stage presence when she wakes up on her vertically hung bed to belt out "Good Morning, Baltimore," an anthem to the city where the show takes place.

NEW YORK, Sept. 9 (UPI) -- "Hairspray," the new Broadway season's first hit musical, is an endearing recreation of the early 1960s when America's feminine hairstyle was bouffant, pop culture was rampant, and the future seemingly bright and unlimited if only race relations could be improved.

Based on John Waters' wacky 1988 movie starring Ricki Lake as an unlikely overweight aspirant for television dance show fame and the drag artist Divine as her equally overweight mother, "Hairspray" stars Marissa Jaret Winokur as the daughter and Harvey Fierstein as the mother. It's a match made in heaven, making Winokur a breakthrough star and bringing Tony Award-winning Fierstein ("Torch Song Trilogy") back to Broadway as an actor for the first time in 15 years.

If life were everything it should be — that is, if life were more like the endearing new musical called "Hairspray" that opened last night at the Neil Simon Theater — your every waking thought would be footnoted by a chorus of backup singers of early 60's vintage. You know, the kind who always come up with helpful bons mots like "ow-oot" and "bop-be-ba, ba-ba-ba-ba," whether the lead singer's heart is breaking or quaking.

What makes this cast even more notable is not only the sheer number of distinctive performers but also their being largely unknown. "Hairspray" is their first big break. Although Broadway often considers stars essential to selling a show, "Hairspray" suggests that new talent can still lure crowds if it is strong enough. Aside from Harvey Fierstein, whom many theatergoers remember from "Torch Song Trilogy," the 1981 play he wrote and starred in, no one in the show was a box office draw.

Cinderella of Baltimore Hometown girl Margo Lion believed in the magic of a story called 'Hairspray.' And then, it cast a spell on Broadway. By J. Wynn Rousuck Baltimore Sun Theater Critic Originally published June 15, 2003

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NEW YORK - The elements all are there: A ball gown, a lost glass object, even a fairy godfather.

Most of all, this real-life fairy tale has, at its center, a beautiful woman who worked very hard for a very long time before her dream - one she never believed would come true - was fulfilled.

Her name is Margo Lion, and she is the Baltimore-born producer of Hairspray, the Broadway show that racked up a whopping eight Tony Awards, including best musical, last Sunday at Radio City Music Hall. In one night - just a matter of hours - she was transformed from someone whose shows generally receive critical acclaim but don't always make money into this season's most successful producer.

The Messy Truth of The Real 'Hairspray' By Laura Wexler Special to The Washington Post Wednesday, September 17, 2003; Page C01

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BALTIMORE -- " 'The Corny Collins Show' is . . . now and forevermore . . . officially integrated!" This declaration, proudly uttered by Tracy Turnblad, a chubby white chick from East Baltimore, signals the beginning of the end of the hit Broadway musical "Hairspray," which formally kicks off its national tour when it opens tonight at the Morris A. Mechanic Theatre. After Tracy's decree, there is jubilation and singing, and a whole lotta white folks instantly shed their racism and learn to love -- and dance -- with their black neighbors.

BALTIMORE - "Hairspray," the musical adaptation of John Waters (news)' 1988 film about a chubby East Baltimore girl who achieves her dream of dancing on a local sock-hop television show, launched its national tour Wednesday night before a raucous audience at the Mechanic Theatre. <a href=http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030919/ap_on_en_ot/hairspray_comes_home_4 target=_blank>more on Yahoo</a>

"Hairspray" is a hefty spritz of fun. The Tony Award-winning musical, which kicked off its national tour with a short, just-concluded run at Baltimore's Mechanic Theater, maintains the gaudy glitz and the helium-giddy energy of the Broadway original and even adds some nuances of its own.

Based on the cheerfully subversive 1988 John Waters movie, "Hairspray" is a musical about integration and body acceptance set to a boppy 1960s pop beat.

But for the role of Edna Turnblad, the big-boned Baltimore hausfrau with a heart of ham, which Vilanch plays in the national tour of the Broadway musical "Hairspray," he had to be shorn. For the sake of low comedy and high publicity, there was a public shaving earlier in the summer on "Live With Regis and Kelly."

Peter Scolari Will Dance Cheek to Cheek With Harvey Fierstein in Bway 'Hairspray'

By KENNETH JONES Playbill

Peter Scolari, the impish actor who sang in the Encores! concerts of Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 and Out of This World, will step into the shoes of Wilbur Turnblad in Broadway's Hairspray, Oct. 28-Nov. 2.

Scolari assumes the role while Tony Award-winner Dick Latessa takes a vacation. The former star of TV's "Bosom Buddies" tested the waters of the Wilbur role earlier this year when he jumped into a couple of performances, a spokesperson confirmed.

The opening is 14 months away -- perfect timing for Clear Channel Entertainment to announce the musical Hairspray as the anchor for the 2004-05 Broadway season in South Florida. The touring company of the latest Tony Awards champion will find its way to the Broward Center in Fort Lauderdale for two weeks in January 2005.

To watch a John Waters film is to partake in the spectacle of modern life in the most absurd and colorful way. Imagine experiencing the madness on stage with live song and dance. You'll have your chance when the award-winning Hairspray, a musical based on Waters' 1988 film cult classic, visits the Aronoff Center Dec. 2-14.

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Hairspray is based upon the New Line Cinema film written and directed by John Waters, with a book by Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan, music by Marc Shaiman and lyrics by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman.

Welcome to the Sixties -- a time of big social upheaval and even bigger hair. For the nostalgic and those curious but too young to remember, the musical comedy "Hairspray," opening Tuesday in Chicago, offers a crash course in everything worth knowing about for the year 1962.

Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, creators of the score for the Tony Award-winning musical "Hairspray," might have developed their project in any number of ways. But working with book writers Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan, as well as with veteran director Jack O'Brien, they chose to do it with just a gentle wink, a minimum of irony and an explosion of high spirits and bubble- gum innocence. That's why the show works so deliciously well.

magine "La Cage aux Folles" married to "Dreamgirls." Imagine "Bye Bye Birdie" undergoing the Motown treatment, along with some revisionist social thinking courtesy of Rosa Parks. Imagine Dick Clark's "American Bandstand" bonding with "Soul Train." And then, if you are of a certain age (or comb the '60s section of vintage shops), conjure up some of the plagues of early 1960s adolescence: hideously ugly plaid skirts, appalling avocado green outfits and the even more appalling orange gym suits designed specifically to reinforce the indignities of forced dodge ball games.

From "The Buddy Deane Show" on WJZ-TV sponsored by Ameche's burger joints, to "The Corny Collins Show" on screen and stage sponsored by Ultra Clutch.

And from Divine to Bruce Vilanch, by way of a gravel pit otherwise known as Harvey Fierstein.

"Hairspray" has gone through far more changes than the typical Baltimore guitar player knew chords.

But the constant in this cultural journey from 1959 Baltimore to 2004 Chicago (where the first national tour of "Hairspray" is taking home more than $1 million a week at the Oriental Theatre) is John Waters.

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